Play sets for toy vehicles are popular toys which are known to provide entertainment and excitement to a user. These play sets typically include a track configuration intended to guide a propelled toy vehicle, such as a 1/64 scale die-cast metal toy vehicle, through a course. The track configurations include closed-loop continuous track arrangements and open-end arrangements. Toy vehicles are placed on these play set tracks and propelled across the configuration by hand or by an external propulsion means.
To bring increased entertainment and excitement to play sets, track configurations may include features such as intersecting tracks, loop segments, and other types of track configurations known in the art. Additionally, attempts have been made at incorporating jumps into these race sets by which a traveling toy vehicle is briefly separated from the track to ultimately rejoin the track at a downstream location. However, these attempts have been limited due to the complexities of ensuring that the launched toy vehicle lands on the downstream track segment in a proper orientation to thus allow the vehicle to continue its course of travel. For example, a launched toy vehicle which re-enters the track inverted or misaligned relative to a longitudinal axis of the track would prohibit wheeled forward progress and thus interrupt play.
Accordingly, a play set for toy vehicles is desired which can provide the entertainment and excitement of a toy vehicle launched from a track and which also includes provisions for returning the launched vehicle to the track in a proper orientation to allow continuous play despite any misalignment which may occur during flight.